Interesting Picture

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Brrrap
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Interesting Picture

#1

Post by Brrrap »

My Neighbor came to me today with a picture of "Grandpa's and friends bikes" they dug out of an old Photo Album. I'm having fun trying to Identify the bikes and thought I'de share. Front to back, I belive what I'm seeing is: 1-Indian 2-Indian 3-Harley 4-Harley and 5th Indian. The picture is tough to try my hand at what years they are, but others might find it obvious. Have fun!
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Bigincher
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Re: Interesting Picture

#2

Post by Bigincher »

Totally cool photo..! I dig the little service station building ( I think that's what it is) --------and what's in the bottles in that rack behind the last bike, does anybody know? Is that how they sold motor oil in those days??
FlatHeadSix
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Re: Interesting Picture

#3

Post by FlatHeadSix »

Incher,
There's nothing in those bottles, the rack next to the pop machine is full of empty soda bottles.

But they did sell oil in glass bottles. There was an outfit in Milwaukee in the 60's called Warden's Oil Company that had a fleet of small tanker trucks that drove around to the service stations and collected the drain oil. They then "re-refined" it, whatever that meant. I would guess it was some sort of filtration process. They put the re-refined stuff in 55 gallon barrels with a hand crank pump on the top and had a rack of one quart glass bottles next to the barrel, if I remember correctly they had a paper stopper in them like a milk bottle. They also had metal spouts that fit the glass bottles for pouring it in the engine.

In 1965 I was driving a '49 Hudson and riding a '39 WLD, they both used a LOT of oil and I was one of Warden's best customers, the re-refined oil was two-bits a quart if you took the bottle with you, 20 cents if you put the empty back in the rack.

Great picture!, thanks for posting it. brings back a lot of memories

mike
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Re: Interesting Picture

#4

Post by Bigincher »

I'm just a young whipper-snapper, but I thought I remembered seeing oil in glass bottles somewhere when I was kid. Or maybe it was just a rack for your empty pop bottles, as in the photo!
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Re: Interesting Picture

#5

Post by kevsett »

My grandpa always had a drum of Trop-Artic oil w/ a pump and glass jars with stainless steel funnel lids for his garage and he used to say that's the way it used to be done; except when a gas station customer bought some oil to take home. But he also had the plunger spout and oil cans. He seemed to be sad when oil companies went to plastic square type bottles.
FlatHeadSix
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Re: Interesting Picture

#6

Post by FlatHeadSix »

didn't mean to steal your thread Robert, I just went back to the sixties for minute...

here's a pic of a Sunoco oil bottle with spout

mike
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NightShift
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Re: Interesting Picture

#7

Post by NightShift »

Theres a nice rack in a 3 Stooges episode where they screw with a rich guy and his limo.

Nevermind.
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Re: Interesting Picture

#8

Post by Bigincher »

FlatHeadSix wrote:didn't mean to steal your thread Robert, I just went back to the sixties for minute...
Here's a pic of a Sunoco oil bottle with spout
mike
Thanks Mike, that's what I remember. Now somebody tell me again that's a rack of coke bottles........
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Re: Interesting Picture

#9

Post by joe »

NightShift wrote:Theres a nice rack in a 3 Stooges episode where they screw with a rich guy and his limo.

Nevermind.

Super Soivace! I know the episode well.
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